Blake Griffin

Your best records in the NBA, 33% done with the regular season in the eastern conference are…. crazy.

Look at that! Miami was predictable, but NY, Atlanta, Indiana and Milwaukee? Wow. The west seems to be going a little more to plan, looking at it, but still – Clippers, Grizzlies, Warriors, Rockets, and no sign of the Lakers anywhere? Geez.

So, how did this happen exactly? I’ll give you one word: Bench. In this era, we have been introduced to the, quote on quote, “Superteam”. A big three here, a big four there, a super coach here, a ton of money there – you get the point. But let’s look at the Clippers players – almost all of them average 10 points or more for every three quarters they play. For the knicks, every player but three has 9 points or more in that time. The Warriors have only 4 that aren’t scoring 11 or more in that time period – I could go on with this forever. (NOTE: I use this statistic because it can range over an amount of games, not just one, unlike PPG)

This season is proving a point I’ve been trying to back up for a while now – a team isn’t a superstar and his supporting cast, everyone has to be there. For instance, when LeBron left, The Cavs gave up 105 points a game and scored 95 – as opposed to it pretty much being vice-versa last year. LeBron had 2,200+ points – nobody came within 1,000 of him. Next year? The top scorer only had 1,100 points. That’s what killed the Cavs – their team was built on LeBron. When the Heat made the finals and lost, it was because only 4 players scored triple digits during the playoffs – the next year, they had 7.

While Blake Griffin and CP3 are a big, if not the biggest parts of the Clippers, the bench takes off the pressure, giving them easy wins almost every time. It’s a new philosophy for winning, which I love, and if you’re not a Heat fan, you probably enjoy this too.